Typical Rent-Seeker behavior. Sit on your ass while everybody else does the work and then point fingers at whoever is the Designated Shit-Catcher du Jour when it becomes known that you haven’t one fucking thing to address the problems.

Go look at it. The guy has (eg) 100+ ambassadors & representatives to appoint and there are currently 2 confirmed (including Tillerson, so 1 really) and 3 others announced. And that’s just the State Dept.

Then think about the 4,000 other positions that need to be filled just to keep the Exec Branch functional.

It’s fucking appalling.

Gussie Jives

Hi Bob! Great show as always, and I’m glad you’re firmly opposed to Milo Snuffleuppagus. However, it would be remiss of me not to point out that from time to time, both you and Chez have channeled Milo’s main schtick on Banter.

Unlike probably a lot of your listeners, I actually followed the whole “Gamergate” thing pretty close, so I’ve observed Milo’s “rise” from his first big breaks back in 2014. Before he attached himself to Trump, he was boilerplate “haha feminist special snowflakes and their safe spaces, you triggered bro?” That’s always been part and parcel of his little campus tour: attacking straw-feminism and insisting anything so-called SJWs do is wrong and bad.

To be fair to you, I’ve only seen this kind of thing from you maybe once or twice; Chez is far worse in this respect, coming out with another “here’s what those rainbow-haired millennial snowflakes are doing now” article seemingly every month. Ben Cohen’s dabbled in this as well with his defense of Ricky Gervais deadnaming Caitlin Jenner and his defense of stereotypical native costumes.

My point is: if you and Chez are going to be against Milo, be against all of what Milo stands for. Not just the bullying, not just the Trump support, but his transmisogyny and his anti-feminism. Don’t walk into Milo’s skin just for the sake of a Banter article.

muselet

Donald Trump exaggerates the number of floors in his—or should I say “his”?—buildings to make himself feel better, so it’s entirely possible he treats poll numbers the same way: add 10 or 15 points to give himself a little ego boost. Either that or he doesn’t know what “through the roof” actually means.

Trump apparently was very taken by the looks of Robert Caslen, superintendent of West Point, who he thought looked like he was from Central Casting, but chose (by means of some inscrutible process known to himself alone) HR McMaster instead. My sympathies to McMaster, since he’s going to have the inexcusable KT McFarland as his deputy.

“How many times does Donald Trump get to fuck things up and then get a do-over?” He can’t do anything that would alienate his supporters, and he has an R after his name so the congressional Rs won’t say a word against him. Based on that, I’d estimate the number is something on the order of ∞ + 1.

“The horror of nuclear.” Wow. Trump must have been watching Godzilla the night before he dropped that clanger.

Milo Yiannopoulos is a punk. He should have been ignored by all and sundry from the get-go, but getting shunned even by the Right is acceptable as second-best.

No, those who work at Dead Andy have no standards. They’re just worried some of their less-dim readers will associate the site—and them—with Yiannopoulos’s comments about ephebophilia (of course, he insists they were taken out of context, which makes me wonder just what the hell context they’d be appropriate in).

Trump didn’t (doesn’t?) just ogle teenaged girls, he openly sized (sizes?) them up as potential sex partners. If that’s not enough to make your skin crawl, there’s also his infamous remark about Ivanka when she was in her late teens, that if he weren’t related to her, he’d probably be dating her. Ick ick ick ick ick.

Bob, the congressional Rs don’t have the spine/intestinal fortitude/stones/grit (delete according to taste) to confront Trump, let alone turf him out. They’re currently peeved because he tossed them the hot potato of the Obamacare replacement and walked away, but they won’t do anything. They may whinge about him occasionally—and under carefully-controlled circumstances—but open mutiny simply isn’t in them.

“Who should European leaders listen to, you or President Trump?” A fair question. There’s a rift in the White House between the Steve Bannon faction and the sane(r) people. The correct answer is, of course, “neither.”

Who’s going to prosecute Trump for violating the Presidential Records Act? Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III? I got a big picture of that happening.

Josh Marshall has been following the Felix Sater story (here, here and here). Sater sounds like a real charmer, just the sort of person Trump likes to surround himself with and—by some strange coincidence—just the sort of person Vladimir Putin finds useful.

Michael Cohen is typical of a Trump associate: a terrible liar who doesn’t even bother trying to keep his lies straight because it doesn’t matter. As long as everyone who’s not a Trump insider—specifically including our glorious news media—goes haring off in pursuit of the latest cloud of chaff Cohen has released, it’s all good.

I don’t remember where I saw it, but the Russians are having more than a little buyer’s remorse over Trump. He’s erratic and undisciplined (which is how I read “is a risk-taker who can be naïve”), which makes him a less-than-valuable asset. That psychological dossier should have been compiled before the election.

Trump would have embarrassed himself at the National Museum of African American History and Culture if he had the capacity for embarrassment. Good grief.

Since Donald Trump has never evidenced any interest in actually, you know, being President, the speculation has long been that he would be a figurehead—during the campaign, his people even said he saw his role as Murca’s CEO—who’d speechify and hold Ain’t-I-Great rallies and Make America Great Again! while Mike Pence and the rest of the flunkies do the actual work. Hell, if John Kasich (wasn’t it?) is to be believed, Trump explicitly said that that was to be the deal: the VP would handle domestic and foreign policy while Trump would preen for the adoring masses.

This. Is. Not. Normal.

(Bob, you missed Chez’s fucking at 13:38 and his shit at 54:45.)

–alopecia

Victor the Crab

Milo Yiannopoulos is a punk. He should have been ignored by all and sundry from the get-go

And yet that sleazy anal wart Bill Maher invited him on his show to basically stroke his ego (and dick), defend his right to say his horrendous and offensive shit, and scold liberals for protesting and attempting to silence his shit. And now, in a NYT interview, Maher is taking credit for Milo’s downfall saying “Sunlight is the best disinfectant. You’re welcome!”
Bill Maher is a fucking disingenuous hypocrite who deserves a Milo style downfall. At the least, he doesn’t deserve to be a voice of reason to liberals.

muselet

I saw this morning that Bill Maher was in danger of breaking an arm from patting himself on the back for Milo Yiannopoulos’s fall off the wingnut gravy train. My reaction was long and consisted mostly of swearing and calling Maher the cock taking credit for the sunrise.

Maher took the little weasel’s protestations of being merely a provocative entertainer who comments on politics seriously and never challenged the actual words he has said and written (the stuff about boys and older men is irrelevant, frankly, in large part because he’s incapable of telling the truth). I understand Maher needs to make nice, more or less, with his guests so his show isn’t just him sitting at a big table and gabbling semi-coherently, but there is—or should be—a limit to that.

As far as I’m concerned, Maher was past his best-by date a decade ago.

–alopecia

Zero Dark Thirsty ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ

Haven’t listened to the show yet but have to share this.
This is worth a chuckle:

Blessed are the deal-makers for theirs is the kingdom. Big time. Blessed are they who scorn: for they shall be comfortable. Blessed are they who are persecuted by the dishonest press for they shall continue down the paths of righteousness and that’s what is going on here.

The Lord is my shepherd. OK? Totally. Big league. He is a tremendous shepherd. The best. No comparison. I know more than most people about herding sheep. And that’s why I won the election in a landslide and it’s why my company is doing very very well. Because He said, “I’m with you, Donald. You will never want.”

So we were on this green pasture by the still waters and He said, “Lie down.” I said, “Lie down?” He said, “Lie down.” And He made me lie down. Right there in the pasture. So I lie down. People are so surprised that I lie down — “Oh, he’s lying down.” But He’s my shepherd. Great shepherd. Not just good. Great. It was right there that I thought, “This is going to be a tremendous golf course. Terrific greens. Plenty of water. And it is. Everybody who plays it comes away saying, “That is the greatest course in the entire world.” Everybody.

So He was saying to me, Blessed are the deal-makers for theirs is the kingdom. Big time. Blessed are they who scorn: for they shall be comfortable. Blessed is machismo for it wins again and again. Blessed are they who are persecuted by the dishonest press for they shall continue down the paths of righteousness and that’s what is going on here. We are bringing righteousness to Washington for the first time and making incredible progress. I’ve done more in the past month than most presidents do in a year. Washington was without form and void and I issued an executive order, “Let there be light” and did I get credit for it? No, the dishonest press said, “It hurts our eyes.” So I divided the light from the darkness. Day and night. Night and day. I did all this in two nights and a day. Under deadline, under budget. Next week we’re going to do the firmament, the waters, the dry land, start naming beasts, all the rest of it.

I tell you, I have been walking through the valley of the shadow of death. The shadow of death. I have to say that. Terrible. Because of the dishonest Midianites, or, as I call them, the media, including a lot of you here in this room, writing stories about chaos. Where’s the chaos? We’ve got light and darkness, day and night. There is no chaos. I know what’s true and the level of dishonesty is unbelievable. The story about the rich man in hell and the beggar Lazarus in heaven — fake news. Totally fake. Rich man wouldn’t give him the crumbs off his table? Not true. Never happened. “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” He never said it. Same with “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into the kingdom of heaven.” Garbage. Total garbage. I am not a bad person. You don’t get to 306 electoral votes by being a bad person. So I wish you could write something nice but maybe you can’t and that’s OK, too. I can live with that because I fear no evil: for the Lord is with me; and my staff has been a great comfort to me. Tremendous people. Because I know good from bad. OK? I inherited a mess, the instability, divisiveness, darkness, iniquity, leprosy, madmen, but nonetheless the Lord has prepared a tremendous table before me in the presence of my enemies. Beautiful table. Steaks, seafood, tremendous wines, anything I want, and here I am with goodness and mercy following me every single day of my life, not just mercy but goodness too, and we’re making tremendous progress, great numbers getting bigger every day, multitudes gathering everywhere I go, touching the hem of my garment, but the media is still bitter about Hillary losing in a landslide and the Lord anointing my head with oil which people make fun of and that’s OK, let them laugh at my hair, I got 306 Electoral College votes. They said there’s no way to get 222. No way, Jose. I got 306. That’s what I call the cup running over. Filled the cup and then it ran over. The overflow was tremendous. Huge overflow. Biggest overflow ever. Fantastic. Through the ceiling. Stock market up. Good jobs. You name it. So it looks like I am going to be dwelling in the house of the Lord forever and I’m having a good time. I love this. I am having fun.